Concept of a „court” for the purposes of the preliminary ruling procedure

The subject of the study is the criteria for recognising a given body as a “court” for the purposes of preliminary ruling proceedings. The problem examined in the article translates directly into ensuring the right to an effective means of judicial review and uniform application of EU law. As a rule, the criteria for recognising a body as a “court” are clearly defined in case law. The first part of the analysis will concern those selected rulings, in which the CJEU recognised the designation of a “court” within the meaning of EU law in relation to various committees, to which national law has empowered competence to resolve specific types of disputes. The presented diagnosis will allow us to answer the question of what the criteria for the autonomous concept of a “court” are in EU law. Due to the fact that in recent years the case law on the interpretation of the criterion of independence has developed particularly, another, separate part of the study will be devoted to this issue. The article uses the descriptive method with elements of sociological methods, which allowed us to assess how the CJEU applies the criteria for recognising a national body as a “court” within the meaning of EU law in practice. The analysis demonstrates that in current case law, the procedure for appointing and dismissing judges is subject to the scrutiny of the CJEU. It should be emphasised that the practice of the Court is sometimes inconsistent.